The Scene: Prospect Park, this afternoon. I’m with a good buddy of mine, a very smart, successful, 40 year old executive.

Me: So how was your date?

Her: Well, I invited him to my place for brunch. And he went in for a kiss in the kitchen.

Me: Hey great!

Her: Not really. He was really into it and I wasn’t, so I said, “let’s go into the living room and have coffee.” I sat in the armchair so that he would be on the sofa across the room. And instead, he came and practically sat on top of me in the chair and started kissing me again.

Me: Wait, what? Did you tell him to get off you?

Her: Well, I wanted to, but I was worried if I did he’d think I was being a bitch. Or he’d get more aggressive, and I didn’t want to make him angry.

That was hours ago and I’m still rattled by that conversation, on so many levels. Fortunately the dude didn’t get more aggressive, and they ate brunch and he left and she’s never going to speak to him again. But ladies, for the love of all that’s holy, if this ever happens to you, be a bitch. Seriously. I cannot say this strongly enough: if someone is touching you in a way you don’t like, and you want him to stop, be a bitch. If there was ever a time to unleash your biggest, baddest, bitch, that’s it. So please, please, BE A BITCH.

HOLLA. Once upon a time, when I was a WeeDork and worked in a shop, some dude who was quite a bit older than me started coming around and being all flirty and stuff, and eventually invited me out for dinner. We ate, it was nice, he was nice, but when he walked me to my car, there was the awkward “well, uh…” and then SMOOOOOOOCH EAT FACE and also BOOB GROPE and I pushed him off and said “hey, what are you doing?!”

He said “oh, sorry,” all sad-face, and I said “No, it’s okay, just chill out,” (meaning “I like you okay, I accept your apology, but you’re moving too fast and making me uncomfortable”) but he took that to mean “J/K, I really like it, that was just me putting up my little girly protest so you think I’m not slutty! Hee hee!” so he did it again.

At which point I extracted myself clumsily and hastily, angry and upset, but worried about “overreacting,” and got in my car and drove off with tears in my eyes. I worried for weeks about him waiting for me after work.

I still far too frequently think about what I wish I had done the first time. Which was BE A BITCH.

Hear, hear. I learned at a perilously young age (14) that saying “I’m not sure about this…” didn’t work with my boyfriend at the time.

Situation: Us, making out. Him, attempting to shove his hands down my pants. Me, “Uh…. can we maybe not…” to which, he responded, “come on, you’ll like it” and fucking RIPS my pants.

I’m still proud of myself that, at 14, I was able to push that asshole off and tell him that if he touched me again, he would discover my fist planted in his face.

I hear girls are my college all the time saying “But he wanted to and I was drunk and…” and it’s all I can do not to cry. It’s not being a bitch (except for in the good way), it’s not being mean, it’s not being a tease. It’s about knowing what you want and not letting some jerk change that.

My dad was the first to say to me ‘if someone disrespects you or tries to make you uncomfortable you have the right to use force’. Whenever something like this happened he was pissed it happened to me, but dude actually bragged to his friends that his girl could kick ass.

As a teen I punched kids in the face for pinching my waist and kicked boys in the nuts for trying to forcefully kiss me. When I was older I just had to push them off me repeatedly, but once I had to take a knife out when some jerk – another science grad student nowadays- got into the ladies room after annoying me all night to ‘seduce’ me. Seduce that, pendejo.

@kinsey4.2: I completely agree about the “yell at them and hug them” reaction. That’s totally how I felt when my friend told me this. I was horrified b/c that dude could have totally sexually assaulted her, which made me want to hug her. On the other hand, I wanted to shake her for not fighting back because she cared more about whether the dude–the pushy, inappropriate, violating dude–thought she was a bitch. Because it’s better to be a victim than a bitch? GAH! WTF is wrong with this picture?

If you’re nice to guys who are doing things to you that you don’t want them to do, it’s too easy for them to ignore you and claim you never said no. I’d rather get called a bitch than be molested. There’s always someone who is going to call you a bitch no matter what you do, so whatever.

This is really timely, because something similar to this happened to me on Friday night. I was with a friend and a big group of her friends whom I was meeting for the first time, and one of the friends started to hit on me aggressively, rubbing my back and even kissing me on the mouth– and I didn’t really know what to do, because I didn’t want to make a scene or a bad impression on these new people I was getting to know, and because I didn’t want to seem like some kind of homophobe by saying that I wasn’t into what was happening, so although I got it to stop, I wasn’t as forceful as I should have been.

Obviously my situation is different for a couple of reasons, another being that I was in a group of people so I wasn’t concerned for my safety as your friend may have been, but I felt taken advantage of. It also made me wonder if, in being friendly, I had done something to invite what happened, as if it were my fault that a stranger was doing this to me, which is obviously ridiculous. The bottom line is that I need to become more comfortable speaking up and not worrying about how others will regard that.

I’m a bitch in these situations and I’m not ashamed of it. Heck, I don’t even think twice. I’ve done this so many times in the past that it’s a freakin’ miracle I made it through my 20s without being charged for assault. It doesn’t matter if I’m alone with someone or in a group.

The last time this happened was a little over a year ago when a colleague of mine asked me to have a drink with him at a conference. It was late afternoon so I didn’t see the harm in that. We had business to discuss and I assumed that was his motivation – to discuss business in a more pleasant atmosphere. When we were walking back through the hotel we were in an empty hallway and he stopped to make a point, but kept reaching out and touching my arm. The first time I pulled my arm away and stepped back one pace. The second time I did the same and told him not to do that again. The third time I punched him in the solar plexus and doubled him right over. The strange thing about this is we were talking district business the entire time, but his body language was carrying on a completely different conversation. The creepy thing about this was his wife was staying at that hotel and attending the same conference. I hope I left a decent bruise that took some explaining.

@Gretchen: WTF, Creepy effin jerk!
Something similar happened my first year of grad school, and I wish I had responded like you.

This field/classmate started acting “weird”, but since this was my first year in the States I thought maybe it was me and people here had different notions of personal space.
It ended with him trying to kiss me in my house with my husband sleeping on the couch. I kicked him out and he still was looking for me – going as far as appearing in my lab on the other side of campus. So I emailed him to stop contacting and speaking to me and switched cell phones with my husband. Sick fucker.
It pisses me off so much because now thinking about it, people here in the States generally give you more personal space than back home. It’s sickening to think that this person was somewhat taking advantage of me due to my inexperience within this culture. grrr.

Oh shit. I’ve never had something like that happen to me-not a sustained attack, but once in college this weirdo randomly kissed me on the cheek. Crazy religious freak who was always talking about God and carried a cross around sometimes (I shit you not). Why he did that, I don’t know-he was leaving a room, and randomly kissed me on the cheek, then left before I could punch him or do anything. It stunned me. But then I put Purell on my cheek and vowed to punch him and say God told me to do it if he tried it again. He never did-he seemed to like to go after other girls.

Really scary part is he eventually got convicted of stalking and is now in jail.

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